Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, May 03, 2012

EoZ is an "extremist hate site!"

My well-received essay pointing out the hypocrisy of Israel haters, and the fundamental moral difference between Zionists and anti-Zionists, was quoted by Jonathan Hoffman in The Jewish Chronicle.

The very first comment, by "Mary in Brighton," was:

Jonathan why do you keep linking us to extremist hate sites ?

Another says that my post is a "far right whitewash."

I see similar comments when my posts are linked to on Reddit.

It's always amusing to see how people who have no ability to counter arguments choose instead to resort to name calling and an attempt to de-legitimize their opponents.

And if this is an "extremist hate site," then are there even words to describe the many sites to the right of EoZ?

(h/t istrue)

Sham Hamas/Fatah "unity" continues

From AFP:

A Cairo meeting between Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal and an official of the rival Fatah movement made no headway on the formation of a Palestinian national unity government, an official said on Thursday.

Two hours of talks Wednesday night in the Egyptian capital produced “nothing new,” the Palestinian official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Meshaal and his deputy Mussa Abu Marzuk discussed with senior Fatah official Azzam al-Ahmed “the possibility of advancing the reconciliation process, in particular a government of national unity, but the meeting produced nothing new,” the official said.

It's actually worse than this. Hamas denies that there was any formal meeting at all, with a spokesman claiming that at best there was an ad-hoc, unplanned meeting.

Hamas also accused Fatah of arresting six of its members in Bethlehem and further accused them of torturing Hamas prisoners.

We are now in May - the month that was supposed to be when the "unity" elections would be held.

The entire "unity" sham came about as a reaction to a series of rallies last year in Gaza and the West Bank that spooked Hamas and Fatah into thinking that an Egyptian-style revolution to topple them was imminent. They held lots of meaningless meetings pretending to unify, and it seems that their delaying tactics have been successful: even though everyone realizes by now that there has been no real movement to unify the two sides, there has also been no repetition of the demonstrations.

Meanwhile, Fatah is buckling down on freedom of expression and is acting, along with Hamas, just like the other Arab dictatorships.

(h/t CHA)

When a charge of racism proves the bigotry of the accuser

I saw this tweet from anti-Zionist Joseph Dana:

Perhaps, the most racist article that you will read in the Israeli press today. Courtesy of the Israeli Onion, Ynet.

And what did this "racist" article, written by Giulio Meotti, say?

World-renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman, afflicted with polio as a child, just attended the 60th anniversary celebration of the Israeli Foundation for Handicapped Children. While in the Arab world disabled people have been called “the invisibles,” because they are segregated and hidden from the public eye, Israel’s work with illness and disabilities would merit a book in itself.

Then, after eight paragraphs on Israel's accomplishments in promoting the rights of the disabled, the author writes:

In Palestinian society, the most famous disabled was Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin. In Iraq, terrorists used many disabled women for suicide attacks. In Israel, Down syndrome youth can ask to be inducted into the army. This is the story of the Middle East conflict: death cult vs. Israel’s right to life.

The focus of the article is Israel's accomplishments, not Arab attitudes, concerning the disabled. Yet Dana, like all those who self-righteously obsess over supposed Israeli crimes, seizes upon this as a sterling example of Israel's "racism" against Arabs.

According to Dana, noting that Arab society shuns handicapped people is racist.

However, the Arab Human Development Report said:

In many Arab countries, vulnerable groups are subjected not only to institutional discrimination but also to the prejudices of the population at large. Such vulnerability is not confined to women; it extends to other marginalized groups such as minorities, the elderly, youth, children, disabled persons, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees. The neglect and marginalization of these vulnerable groups is a blemish on the human rights records of Arab countries, which must be removed without prevarication or delay.

The Guardian's Comment is Free quotes a disability advocate in Egypt as saying:

"The idea that children with cerebral palsy could be self-dependent and integrated with Egyptian society is completely alien; most people think they'd be better off dead."

In The National, a UAE paper that Dana writes for, it was reported:

With her six-year stint as the UN's special rapporteur on disability drawing to a close, Sheikha Hissa Khalifa Al Thani questions whether handicapped people in the Arab world will ever get a fair deal....The UN's outgoing disability watchdog describes the Arab region as lagging behind the rest of the world. "Disabled people are more marginalised and more isolated than other people. But specifically in the Arab region, they are invisible, because of negative social attitudes and the lack of a human rights culture," Sheikha Hissa said.

Does Dana consider all these experts on disability in the Arab world to be racist?

Of course not. That toxic word, according to self-righteous moralizers like Dana, only applies to Zionists and Israelis.

If an Italian quotes Arabs about Arabs in an Israeli newspaper, Dana thinks that this proves that Israelis are racist.

Which means that the only bigot here is Dana himself.

UPDATE: Here are some of those Zionist racists and their disability-washing (including helping Arab families with disabled children - h/t Raizel.) It is a very worthwhile video to watch.

On the Middle East reaction to foot and mouth disease in Gaza (Zvi)

Comment from Zvi on this posting about how Hamas seems blasé about a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in Gaza, and how Israel is doing everything it can to help stop its spread:

"the Agriculture Coordinator at the DCL was urgently called to Erez Crossing in order to receive samples of the disease from his Palestinian colleagues."

There was no assistance from Iran in this hour of need; in mid-April, Iran was busy threatening the US. There was no assistance from Syria, which in mid-April was busy faking a truce and shelling its own civilians using tanks. There was no assistance from Egypt, where the disease originated; there was not even an attempt to cut off the smuggling tunnels from the Egyptian side in order to prevent the smuggling of disease-carrying animals. There was not even a breath of assistance from the Bigotry/Double Standards movement, which in mid-April was busy preparing to swarm-attack Ben Gurion International Airport. There was not a whiff of assistance from the Salafists, who in mid-April were busy calling for the annihilation of Israel.

When the crisis hit, the country that mobilized its own resources to help... was Israel.

You can say that Israel has self-interest in the matter. And it does. So does every other country in the region - the same ones that spend put so much effort into trying to destroy Israel, and the ones where only a simple majority of the population obsesses about doing so.

Well, it's a good thing for the region that there is ONE country in the middle east that has advanced capabilities. It's a good thing that there is SOMEONE in the region who cares about win-win solutions, rather than obsessing about repulsive vendettas.

When really bad, dangerous things happen, there is no substitute for being responsible adults.

Did Al Akhbar get punk'd?

From Al Akhbar, later picked up by Hezbollah's Al Manar newspaper and many others:

The Lebanese government has said it will look into the legality of a “Lebanese society” at an American university hosting a joint event with an Israeli one.

The Lebanese Social Club (LSC) at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) is organizing a charity fundraiser with the Israeli Leadership Council “for the disenfranchised children of Israel and Lebanon.”

The group is part of the Lebanese Collegiate Network (LCN), which Al-Akhbar revealed earlier this month is heavily sponsored by the CIA, leading to claims that it was little more than a recruitment center for the American spy network.

The tagline for the “Night of the Arts” event, scheduled for May 6 in the Ackerman Student Union at UCLA, says it “will be a grand celebration of the culture, passion, and ethos of the Israeli and Lebanese peoples.”

It adds “all profits will be divided equally 50/50 among orphanages in Israel and Lebanon,” without mentioning the thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians killed by Israel in recent decades.

Adnan Mansour, Lebanese foreign minister, said the government was to look into whether the event was legal under Lebanese law.

“We will investigate whether the Lebanese Social Club consists of Lebanese citizens or Lebanese Americans,” he said.

Lebanon and Israel are in a state of war and according to Lebanese law it is illegal to communicate with any person from an enemy state.

Al Manar even has a copy of the poster for this event.

Only one problem: I cannot find any mention of this event anywhere besides Arab websites.

The UCLA Lebanese Social Club website is down, although the group certainly exists and has a national presence.

The Israeli Leadership Council has a webpage with listings of many events - but not a word about this one.

The poster looks like a typical college poster, complete with the logos of both these organizations. But it doesn't mention the names of the charities, for example.

This is very fishy.

Was there a planned event that was canceled? If so, there would still be traces of it on the web.

Was this a hoax played against Arab newspapers? The article quotes a real person, who does go to UCLA:

Event co-organizer Patrick Malkoun, from the university's Lebanese Social Club, said he had not been aware of any legal issues concerning Lebanese citizens having dealings with Israelis.

"We are all here as college students to prove our worth in this world, what we can do in the business world. If we can put on events, if we can put on charity fundraisers, if we can contact people to show off communication skills and business skills," he said.

If this was true, I would imagine that Zionist organizations would be making a big deal out of cooperation between Arabs and Jews for charity. (Zionists seem to like things like that. Go figure.)

So I have a hard time believing that this was ever a real event, and while I also have a hard time thinking that some students set out to play a practical joke on Al Akhbar, that seems like a more likely explanation at this time.

The Arab and anti-Israeli blogosphere, for their part, are playing their roles to the hilt - each one of them aghast at the very idea that Lebanese and Israeli American students could possibly cooperate for charity. This story is all over the place.

Except for UCLA.

The Rhythm of Israel (video)

Another excellent video that just came out.

(h/t Shmuel)

The first Israeli humanitarian rescue mission - in 1953

A fascinating article in Israel Hayom:

In 1953, the first Israeli navy flotilla sailed to the Aegean Sea for a month-long exercise. Just as they were about to return, a terrible earthquake hit the Greek islands and the Israelis, as inexperienced and under-trained as they were, rushed to help.

...The soldiers began unloading anything that could be used in assisting the wounded. They set up a triage station on the port’s main pier. The highest-ranking physician on the flotilla, Dr. Ashkenazi, together with a younger physician, Dr. Seelenfreud, were in charge of treating the wounded. They decided who would receive immediate treatment and who would have to wait, and performed emergency surgeries. Here a fractured pelvis, there a brain injury, a premature labor, broken bones that needed setting and hemorrhages that had to be stopped.

Although the two Israeli physicians tried to set things in order, they were surrounded by countless wounded people, panic and despair. Chaos reigned.

...The small motor boats that set out to locate the wounded had brought many back for first aid treatment. The Israeli vessel K-28, known as the Mivtah, which was under the command of Arie Brosh, was converted into a maritime hospital, a kind of giant ambulance that ferried the wounded to hospitals on the Greek mainland, a day’s sail away.

Each time, about a hundred victims who had received first aid on the island were brought aboard the K-28. They were later taken to the city of Patras, five hours away. The ship would then turn around, go back to Cephalonia for more wounded, bring them to Patras and its hospitals, and return for another round of evacuation. Some 400 critically wounded people were evacuated aboard the Mivtah.

For three full days, the Israeli officers and sailors labored “with endless dedication and immense devotion,” as Shlomo Erel recalls. The Israeli flotilla was the first to set up aid stations on the beach in Cephalonia. Later, they had assistance from the British. By the end, the soldiers had treated thousands. They used up nearly all of their supplies, food, medicine, water and fuel. They gave everything they had to help the people of Cephalonia.

...When they left the bay, all the other fleets blew their foghorns simultaneously to salute the Israeli flotilla, Erel recalls with pride. The king also came to say goodbye and thank the Israeli sailors. When the Israeli ships entered the port of Piraeus, Greek Prime Minister Marshal Alexandros Papagos came to thank the officers and soldiers and ordered that the vessels be loaded with “the best of everything.” Erel recalls that the Greek press, and even newspapers in other countries, reported on the rescue mission on their front pages.

Read the whole thing.

I found a brief mention of Israel's involvement in this newspaper article written a week after the quake:

(h/t Yoel)

I will be in a panel discussion on Israel Advocacy in NYC 5/21

From the American Zionist Movement:

Now,I just have to find an appropriate disguise....

Hope to see many of you there!

Foot and mouth disease hits Gaza; Hamas says "don't worry"

AP reports:

A U.N. agency says Egypt’s outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease has reached neighboring Gaza Strip and could soon spread across the Middle East.

The Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization said Wednesday the disease was detected in Gaza’s southern border town of Rafah on April 19.

Juan Lubroth, FAO’s chief veterinary officer, says vaccines are in short supply and animal movement must be limited. He says the disease risks spreading to the Gulf, southern and eastern Europe and further.

But the Hamas government in Gaza says, relax!

An official in Gaza's ministry of agriculture said farmers had received 20,000 doses of vaccine to fight the disease and played down the seriousness of the outbreak.

"The problem surfaced at one farm in Rafah and we isolated the farm and stopped the movement of animals across Gaza," Adel Attalah told Reuters.

"We received the 20,000 vaccines a week ago and ... I can say that most of the animals were given the vaccine," he said, adding that his ministry had now lifted restrictions on the movement of animals. "The situation is not worrying," he said.

What he doesn't say is that those vaccines - and probably the diagnosis - came from Israel, which has taken this very seriously starting two weeks ago:

Today (4/22) a meeting was held between veterinarians from Israel and Gaza at the Gaza DCL due to a concern that the foot and mouth disease might have begun spreading in Rafah, which is in the Gaza Strip.

During the meeting the participants discussed the issue of handling the disease and stopping it from spreading to the rest of the Gaza Strip.As a first step 20,000 doses against the disease were delivered through the Erez Crossing this last Thursday(19\4).

Israel began to handle the spreading of the disease starting on April 13th during the Passover holiday, when the Agriculture Coordinator at the DCL was urgently called to Erez Crossing in order to receive samples of the disease from his Palestinian colleagues.

These samples were transferred to the laboratory of the veterinary services in order to examine the disease and ways to deal with it.

And this is a new, rare strain of FMD:

With vaccines in short supply the Food and Agriculture Association of the United Nations warn that animals should not be moved around Gaza to stop the spread of a new strain of foot and mouth disease. The UN body says international efforts need to step in to stop the virus from spreading further in the Middle East and North Africa.

Following outbreaks of the SAT2 strain of the virus in Egypt and Libya in February, fears that it might jump to neighboring areas were confirmed on 19 April when sick animals were detected in Rafah, a town in the Gaza Strip bordering Egypt. The SAT2 variant is new to the region, meaning that animals do not have any acquired resistance to it.

“Diseases simply do not respect international boundaries, and if FMD SAT2 reaches deeper into the Middle East it could spread throughout vast areas, threatening the Gulf countries – even southern and eastern Europe, and perhaps beyond” said Juan Lubroth, FAO’s Chief Veterinary Officer and head of the organization’s Animal Health Service.

With vaccines against the SAT2 virus still in short supply, the priority at the moment is to limit animal movements to prevent its further spread, he said. Heightened surveillance of animal populations to quickly detect and respond to new outbreaks is also critical.

Right now Israel is the firewall between this disease and the center of the Arab world, not to mention Europe.

At this point is sounds like Hamas doesn't give a damn.

PA glorifies a terrorist and his terrorism

From Palestinian Media Watch:

During the week of the anniversary of the death of PLO arch-terrorist Abu Jihad, the Palestinian Authority held events and broadcast TV programs celebrating him and his terror attacks. One of the striking components of the Abu Jihad festivities was the presentation of the 125 Israeli civilians and soldiers killed in terror attacks he planned and directed, as a positive achievement. Six sporting events were also held in his honor.

"Abu Jihad was killed by the Israeli Mossad in Tunisia on April 16, 1988... and was crowned the Prince of the Martyrs of Palestine... Among the military operations planned by Abu Jihad: the explosion at the Zohar reservoir in 1955; the operation to blow up the Israeli National Water Carrier in 1965; the operation at the Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv, which killed 10 Israelis, in 1975; the blowing up of a truck bomb in Jerusalem in 1975; the killing of Albert Levi, the senior sapper, and his assistant, in Nablus in 1976; the Dalal Mughrabi operation, in which more than 37 Israelis were killed, in 1978; the shelling of the Eilat Port in 1979; the Katyusha fire on the northern settlements [in Israel] in 1981 and the capture of 8 Israeli soldiers in Lebanon, and their exchange for 5,000 Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners and 100 of the detainees from occupied territory in 1982. He planned the infiltration and bombing of the headquarters of the Israeli military governor in Tyre, leading to the deaths of 76 officers and soldiers, including 12 senior officers, in 1982; he led the war of attrition during the years 1982-1984 in southern Lebanon, and planned the Dimona Reactor operation in 1988, which was the principle reason for his assassination." -[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 16, 2012]

Here's one video shown on PA TV:

Abu Jihad: "After we strike the [Israeli] headquarters, Allah willing, we will close off the streets [of Tel Aviv]. On one street, for example, we will hold 500 people [hostage]. 500 people at once. Can anyone bargain over them? No one, without exception, is allowed to go there unless he sets up the fuse and the explosives. At any moment, he can blow up everyone. Blow up their building, or the whole thing, no matter how many people are there. Our dagger will be a poisoned dagger in our enemy's heart, and we will take down as many as possible. We want to land on enemy territory (Israel) and to be like a single fortress. When we get there, Allah willing, we will begin to fire, to fire on our enemy. We will dig in his throat and heart with the massacres that we spoke about. We want to turn the Tel Aviv day black. We want to turn the Tel Aviv day into destruction, Allah willing. We will turn the Tel Aviv day so it will be remembered in the history of Tel Aviv as black Saturday, black Sunday. Tel Aviv will be closed that whole day with blood and destruction."

Narrator: "It occurred to Abu Jihad to publish a Fatah journal named The Call of Life - Palestine. The first issue, published in October 1959, called for an armed revolution to uproot the Zionist entity. [Abu Jihad] was the mastermind of the armed struggle against Israel. He is a symbol of Palestinian armed struggle. Abu Jihad fell as a Martyr, and symbolized the generation of the fighting commanders who adopted the path of resistance as the first and last solution for the nation's cause. He was known as a tough fighter and an extraordinary commander who was always in a state of war and never lost his way."
[PA TV (Fatah), April 16, 2012]

And another:

Narrator: "The Palestinian revolution was at its peak, and many times Fatah carried out 60 special operations a day. Among the leading operations of the Prince of Martyrs (Abu Jihad): the explosion of the Zohar reservoir in 1955, the explosion of the Israeli National Water Carrier in 1965, the 1975 Savoy Hotel operation in Tel Aviv, in which 10 Israelis were killed, the Dalal Mughrabi operation in 1978, in which more than 37 Israelis were killed, the shelling of the Eilat Port in 1979, and the Dimona Reactor operation in 1988 (bus hijacking and killing of 3 civilians), which was the principle reason for his assassination on April 16, 1988."
[PA TV (Fatah), April 16, 2012

I have seen people argue that when the PA honors Abu Jihad it is no different than Israel honoring political leaders who were active as underground militants from the pre-1948 Irgun. Abu Jihad was also a political figure, they say. But these articles and videos prove that the glorification of Abu Jihad is precisely because of his terror actions, not for any political activities.

Indeed, this list of attacks credited to him shows that he was an active terrorist up until the end of his life - and those attacks are praised.

By the way, I had never heard of an attack at a "Zohar reservoir" in 1955. There were some fedayeen attacks from Gaza around then, but it is unclear if Abu Jihad had anything to do with them; Wikipedia says he received military training in 1956 a few months after being released from Egyptian prison for being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, so the claim seems exaggerated at the least.

"Iran biggest cyber threat to US"

From Government Computer News:

Iran has demonstrated a willingness to attack the United States and the intent to develop a cyber war capability, eclipsing Russia and China as a threat to the nation, a panel of policy and technical experts told House lawmakers.

“Iran appears to be moving from defensive to offensive in the way it thinks about cyberspace,” said Ilan Berman, vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, in an April 26 hearing before joint subcommittees of the House Homeland Security Committee.

Berman called an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States, uncovered in October, credible and said it is an example of the country’s willingness to carry out attacks on U.S. soil. He said it would be unreasonable to expect Iran could balk at a cyberattack against U.S. critical infrastructure.

“Iran is not at the top of the list” of cyber adversaries, said Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University. Those spots usually are given to Russia and China. “But what it lacks in capability, it makes up for in intent.”

Iran also is investing heavily in developing a cyber war capability, having established an Iranian Cyber Army that has taken credit for attacking the online services of the U.S. Voice of America last year. “Intent and cash will take you a long way,” Cilluffo said.

The joint hearing of the Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies, and Counterterrorism and Intelligence subcommittees, was called to assess the threat posed by Iran in cyberspace.

In an April 24 hearing before the Homeland Security Committee's Oversight, Investigations and Management Subcommittee, James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said he was not worried about cyber war with Russia and China, with whom the United States has stable diplomatic relationships. “They aren’t going to start a war just for fun. I don’t know if we can say that for Iran and North Korea,” Lewis said.

Iran has not yet shown any serious expertise in cyberwar capabilities, certainly not on par with Russian or Chinese hackers. However, the time it takes to ramp up that ability can be measured in months, not years.

Not to mention that there are plenty of relatively easy targets that could still severely impact the infrastructure of the US, or any country, if taken down. Denial-of-service attacks are easy to do and hard to defend against.

(h/t Yossi)

Handicapped rowing champion sings Hatikva at medal ceremony

When Moran Samuel won the gold medal at a pre-Paralympic international competition in Italy, the organizers did not have a recording of Israel's national anthem Hatikvah to play at the medals ceremony.

They started playing some other anthem, and Samuel indicated that they were playing the wrong song.

So she asked for a microphone - and sang it herself.

The inspiring athlete, who became disabled when she was 24 because of a rare spinal stroke, summed up her reasons for doing what she did:

"If you see an obstacle as a barrier, it might defeat you. If you see it as a challenge - then do your best to overcome it."

Hebrew article here.

(h/t O)

UPDATE: Commenter Jack notes that the song being played really is a version of Hatikvah, with a very long introduction. See here.